Looking for A More Confusing Way to Pay for Apps and Games? Say Hello to Amazon’s “Coins”

Over the last few years, we’ve been spending more and more on apps and games. Even on Android, where a lot of apps are either free or priced lower than their iOS counterparts, we’re more than happy to spend our hard earned money on apps and games. Well, today in Android news Amazon have announced plans to make some changes to the way you buy apps and games on your Amazon Kindle Fire. Say hello to Amazon’s upcoming virtual currency, Coins. You’ve got to hand it to Amazon here, the naming of the whole thing is pretty clean-cut, it’s money…but not dollars. To be clear, this will only affect users on the Kindle Fire line of tablets, and if you like to buy apps and games from the Amazon appstore on your Google Android phone or tablet, the US Dollar should remain king.

Amazon are laying out plans to introduce the new currency to fuel the Fire behind apps and games purchases but, it all sounds like another one of those terrible virtual money scenarios just like Microsoft and their Microsoft Points mess. Each Coin will be worth 1 Cent, which sounds pretty superfluous. Developers shouldn’t notice much different, as Amazon aren’t making changes to the percentage share of profits and they’ll still receive 70 percent. However, all apps must be submitted before April 25th to be ready for the introduction of Coins.

Coins will debut across Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets in May and perhaps the best thing to come out of it is that the online giant is preparing to give away “tens of millions of dollars’ of free Coins” which basically equates to a whole lot of free apps and games. Whether or not it catches on is something we’ll have to wait and see about but, if anything it looks like Amazon is simply looking for a way to set their tablets aside from the increasingly crowded pack.

Personally, I don’t think introducing another mind-boggling scheme such as this is the right way to create a unique image for your tablets but, Amazon look set to do it anyway.